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New Braunfels Herald Zeitung (Newspaper) - January 19, 1984, New Braunfels, Texas
4 New Braunfels Herald-Ze/funp Thursday, January 19,1984OpinionsHerald-Zeltung
Oats Krasar, General Manager Holstrt Job—Qto, EditorAndy Rooneylf its not one thing its something else
It snowed last night. I would have shoveled the sidewalk before I came to work this morning if I didn't have so much to do at the office.
The trash collector was coming but I couldn’t put the garbage out because the sidewalk wasn’t shoveled.
For one thing, the lace broke on my boots and I didn’t want to go out there with my regular shoes on and get my feat wet.
It wouldn’t have hurt if I’d worn my warm coat either, but I forgot to pick It up at the cleaners last Saturday. I must have been watching a game.
The car was low on gas this morning but I probably have enough to make it buck home. I’d have bought gas but I
only had 912 on me. I hate to buy half a tank.
I meant to go to the bank and get some cash yesterday but the lines are always so long I knew I wouldn't have time.
There’s some change in some of these desk drawers. I’ve probably got three or four dollars in nickels, dimes and quarters in here. I ought to clean out this desk sometime. I was going to do it yesterday before I left but I didn't want to be late for dinner.
It would be a good idea if I answered some mail today but I don’t have any stamps left. Maybe at lunchtime I’ll walk over to the post office and get a book of stamps. Do they still sell
books? I haven’t seen one in quite a while.
On second thought, all I have is that |12so I have to go to the bank first. If I don’t get to the bank, I’ll borrow $20 from Ralph.
Let me think. Did I ever pay Ralph back the $20 he loaned me a couple of weeks ago? I’U ask him. If I didn’t, 1’U go to the bank and then the post office and then I’ll pay Ralph back his $20.
One of the first people I ought to write when I get the stamps is Aunt Anne. She’s been sick. Maybe she’d like it better if I sent flowers or called, though. That's what I’ll do, I’ll call... just aa soon as I get some of this stuff cleared off my desk.
I’d go see her but I don’t look very good to be visiting my aunt in the hospital. I’ve got to get my hair cut.
I really ought to have my hair cut today at lunch when I go to the bank. I could do that instead of getting the hardware for the bathroom door.
I wish you could just drop into the barber the way you used to. Now you have to make an appointment the day before or they won’t take you. Come to think of it, I couldn’t get a haircut today even if I wanted to because I didn’t call yesterday.
My hair looks better a little long anyway. Maybe I’ll wait until next week to have it cut. Aunt Anne isn’t really very sick anyway and then I’ll
go see here when she gets home.
I ought to take some of this stuff home that I have in the office. There’s more room. Here’s a box that could go...wait a minute! I brought this in from home last week because I thought I had more room in the office.
Right now I can’t worry about any of these problems because if I do, I’m not going to get anything done at all today.
What I’ll do is, I’ll make a list of all these miscellaneous jobs I ought to do and then put aside some time to do all of them Friday. I’ll have more time Friday after I get some of these problems out of the way. Probably by Friday I won’t have any problems left
at all.
If Friday is as free for me as it looks now, maybe I'll take off and go home a little early. It might be better anyway if I came in fresh Monday morning and did these odd jobs I keep putting off.
One of the things I want to do is get ahead a little on my column. I’m working too close to the deadline. I should write a couple of extras that are timeless. That way, if I get sick or don’t feel like writing someday, ITI have a column ready to go.
I would have written an extra column today but I didn’t have time. I had to write the one that was due this afternoon. .
Jack Anderson
Weinberger plans his own strategy for oil nations
WASHINGTON - Secretory of Defense Caspar Weinberger has secretly earmarked several billion dollars to secure bases for the Rapid Deployment Force throughout the Middle East. He has sought — not always successfully — to work out solid agreements with the countries the Pentagon is pouring money into, in hopes of guaranteeing U.S. access to the naval and air facilities.
Weinberger rates the Persian Gulf area as the United States' No. 3 defense priority, after North America and the NATO allies. From Inside sources and several secret and top-secret documents, my associates Dale Van Atta and Donald Goldberg have uncovered the details of Weinberger’s quiet preparations for the defense of the volatile, oil-rich region:
Egypt. Negotiations for a three-year construction program already underway at a secret air base collapsed last spring when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to go along with the deal. The base is FUS Banat on the Red Sea. and the United States had planned to spend more than 9500 million upgrading it, even though U.S. forces could not be stationed there.
Jordan: As I first reported,
Weinberger planned to help the Jordanians form their own rapid-deployment force to police the area After the publicity, however, Congress refused to put up the money.
Kenya: U.S. forces will be allowed access to the air and naval facilities at Mombassa on the Indian Ocean. ’‘In return,’’ Weinberger noted in one secret report, "we have agreed to upgrade the airfield to support operations by maritime patrol and fleet support aircraft, and to dredge the harbor channel to provide access for our aircraft carriers.” He authorized $75 million through 1985 for this work
Pakistan : President Zia ul-Haq has promised to allow U.S. planes to use airfield in Pakistan should Soviet bombers threaten the Persian Gulf from Afghanistan. He has also agreed to let American weapons be sent to Afghan rebels through Zia’s special forces. In return, the United States is already giving Pakistan $3.2 billion in aid over five years, providing special intelligence information to Zia and training pesidential bodyguards.
Bahrain: This tiny island in the Persian Gulf has agreed to conduct mine-sweeping operations in return for U.S aid in developing it s air defenses — including $200 million worth of surface-to-air missiles.
Diego Garcia: This British-owned flyspeck in the Indian Ocean is the principal air and naval base for U.S. farces in the region, and Weinberger has allotted $575 million for rent and construction improvements, including airfield expansion and for mooring Marine and ammunition ships.
Oman: Weinberger plans to spend mort than $900 million to upgrade military fr*— U A. forces may use in an emergency. Omani facilities would bo vital for naval forces in the
Arabian Sea and for land-based planes and minelayers to protect the Strait of Hormuz.
Saudi Arabia: In addition to the AWACS planes operated by U.S. crews, the United States has its own supply depots at Saudi airfields. More than ii billion is being spent to stock enough equipment and ammunition to sustain American forces for 90 days of combat
Somalia: Weinberger needs 930 million for Somalia, which has agreed to give U ii. forces access to air and naval bases on the Indian Ocean and near the southern entrance to the Red Sea.
United Arab Emirates: Weinberger is giving and selling this strategically placed Persian Gulf federation surface-to-air missiles and more than $1 billion in sophisticated intelligence-gathering equipment and electronic weaponry.
Portugal: Weinberger was willing to pay 9155 million in military aid to improve Lajes air base in the Azores, a vital refueling way-stotion for U.S. forces en route to the Middle East.Money manipulation
Mr. Dooley observed that the Supreme Court reads the elction returns. So, apparently, does the Federal Reserve Board.
Although the Fed vehemently denies any political motivation, a chart kept by administration
economists shows that the growth of the money supply, which is controlled by the Fed, undergoes an uncanny increase in election years. These spurts in money supply encourage economic growth, and in an election year this can be a plus for the party in power.
Another manipulative advantage enjoyed by an incumbent ad
ministration is the timing of the budgeted esp' ‘ ‘ ares to stimulate economic activity.
These political maneuvers are
documented by tracing gross national product. In election years, the GNP invariably shows impressive gains, and not just from all the money spent on political campaigning.Synfuels sybarite
The accountants at the U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corp. are used to some pretty outlandish expense vouchers, but the balked at one submitted by Howard Wilkins, a Synfuels director, for a trip to Washington in 1982. Scrawled on his expense claim are two testy questions: "First class air? Dinner includes a date and is over $30 a person?”
The taxpayer-funded corporation knocked out $30.84 for Wilkins’ data’s dinner, but let the first-class air travel stand. On another trip, Wilkins stayed at perhaps Washington’s plushest hotel, the Four Seasons. But because "other hotels were called, this was the only thing available,” the corporation paid the bill for a single night’s stay: 9339.82.
Washington Today
Convoluted reports on hunger distort importance of the issue
By MIKE FEINSILBER Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Last August, President Reagan confessed to being "perplexed” by reports that people are hungry "in this great and wealthy nation.”
He appointed a task force to find out if that was so.
His task force has now reported. Its answer: Yes. And No.
Yes, it said, there are hungry people; no, it said, hunger is not "rampant.”
Yes: "We find hunger to be a real and significant problem throughout our nation," said chairman J. Clayburn LaForce.
But No: "For the vast majority of low-income people, the private and public parts of the income maintenance and food assistance efforts are available and sufficient for those who toke advantage of them,” said the panel’s report.
Well, then, is the problem worse? Is hunger more widespread than before?
Yes, said the President’s Task Force on Food Assistance, and No.
It dealt with that crucial question in a single sentence that didn’t answer it
"Both need and availability have
grown significantly," the task force found.
This was the only acknowledgement that the country has an increased hunger problem.
"We cannot report on any indicator that will tell us where and by how much hunger has gone up in recent years,” the task force said.
And so the crucial question of whether more Americans are hungry goes begging.
But unless the government decides that substantial hunger remains despite substantial efforts to feed the hungry, it will not increase those efforts.
Bill Moyers, the CBS News commentator, found some grounds for encouragement in the dispute.
Not so many years ago, Moyers noted, there would have been no debate over whether hunger is a big problem. The fact that hunger is not so visible is proof that government programs can work, he said.
Moreover, it may be progress, that there is no longer much of a debate over whether hunger is any business of the government.
"If there is one person in this country hungry, that is one too many,” Reagan said in appointing the task force.
The implication was that the
government ought to.do something about it.
Reagan didn’t say that the gover-runent ought to help only those who can’t help themselves. He applied no means test.
But critics are dismayed by the task force’s overall conclusion that government efforts are "sufficient.”
Civil rights organizations, antipoverty groups, church groups, some Democrats rn Congress and some people who run soup kitchens think the task force has missed the dimensions of the hunger problem.
Robert Greenstein, who ran the Federal Food and Nutrition Service in the Carter administration, says the panel ignored the impact of Reagan’s cuts in government food programs and overlooked entirely the effects of cuts in other basic family programs.
When the government increased the rent of occupants of subsidized housing, he says, it reduced the amount those families had to spend for food.
"As recently as a week ago, the Reagan administration was floating a document calling for another $4 billion cut in food programs over the next five years," Greenstein said.
"That’s remarkable to me. If the president believes what he said, that we shouldn’t have a hungry person in
America, he won’t propose another cut.”
The commission’s chief recommendation called for offering states the option of taking federal money to run their own food assistance programs and to drop out of the food stamp program.
That idea was rejected forcefully by organizations speaking for the nation's governors, mayors and county officials.
In trie debate over whether hunger is widespread, those groups are in agreement. Their answer is an unambiguous yes.
For example, a study in June by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found “a recent and significant increase in the demand for emergency food assistance" in cities across the country.
Mayor Ernest Mortal of New Orleans said of all problems facing American cities, "hunger is probably the most prevalent and the most insidious.’’
President Reagan can read his task force’s report and still remain "perplexed” about the extent and the reasons for hunger in America. The report doesn’t say. To that degree, ifs not much help to him — or to the hungry.
Your Representatives
Sot. John Tow*
Gov. Mark White
Rep. Edmund K item pet
Sen. Lloyd Benison
United States Senate
Governor* Office
Texas House of Representative*
United States Senate
Room 142 Russell Building
Room 200 State Capitol
P.O. Box 2910
Room 240 Russell Building
Washington, D.C. 20610
Austin, Texas 78701
Austin, Texas 78769
Washington, D.C. 20610
;